Translations for the masses

Month: March 2015

It’s spring again.
This is the period of the hanami, that will last ’till May, where Japanese people organize picnic under the blossoming cherry trees.
For some, Spring is the season of love, for me it’s just a rainy season.
Along with love and nature, season were a common theme of waka poetry. Today’s poems are related to spring and I hope you’ll enjoy them.

First (relevant) post! How exciting!
I guess I should start with some explanations about Tanka and Fujiwara no Teika.
Tanka 短歌 (Short poem) is a type of Japanese poetry composed by 31 syllables divided in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern. One of the master of this kind of poetry was Fujiwara no Teika (or Sadaie) 藤原定家 (1162-1241) poet, critic, calligrapher and much more. Like his father, he was a true authority in the field of poetry and compiled two imperial anthologies: the Shinkokinwakashū 新古今和歌集 and the Shinchokusenwakashū 新勅撰和歌集.
He also compiled the famous Hyakunin isshu 百人一首(one poem by a thousand poets), maybe you heard about this one thanks to anime.
But enough with the history lesson, let’s take a look at two tanka.

I can’t believe that I started a blog, but here we are. On this page, I won’t talk about me, as I already have Twitter for that, but I will post various stuff translated by me, from English to Italian, from Italian to English and from Japanese to Italian and English, and maybe some little post about translation itself.
Why this blog? Because I’m bored and sometimes I wanna try new things.
I know this blog isn’t pretty enough, I’ll embellish it when I’m not busy studying, playing videogames or being miserable.
Regarding the name of this place: yaku (訳) means, among other things, “translation”; there’s also a word-play on the word iyaku (意訳) which means “liberal translation”. Yes, it’s a shitty word-play, I know that.